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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Blackberry

When was the last time you saw anybody with a Blackberry? I haven't seen one since my Dad dumped his a couple years ago for an iPhone. The reason being, obviously, is that Blackberry is a struggling company right now, who changed ownership in a desperate ploy for more market share. The main reasons that Blackberry failed is they didn't innovate and once it did, it presented them wrong.

First Blackberry Model (1999)

Blackberry used to be the giant of the smartphone business, particularly capturing the business world who always needed a convenient keyboard. And Blackberry provided that keyboard and e-mailing part that many companies could not give at that point in time. And therein lies Blackberry's number 1 mistake. They kept on putting the keyboard in their models, since 1999 up until the late 2000s when people wanted touchscreens. So Blackberry did what anybody would do, introduced a touchscreen about a year after the first iPhone came out. Even then, they hid their ever-present keyboard under the touchscreen, and as Time says, they couldn't keep up with the innovation of Apple and Google. Okay, so step one to get to where every other company was, but they just continued to use this design of putting a touchscreen somewhere on their phone that included the keyboard! When everyone else was producing thinner and faster touchscreen phones, Blackberry continued to put on Keyboards. Then, about a year or two ago, they introduced the Z10, their first smartphone without a keyboard, they fell behind to competition, as The Globe and Mail testifies. This was after Apple, Android, and Windows phones were already embracing and refining this technology! Not only were they late, it was a bad product. It was thick, it was square, the software was repulsive, Blackberry had one chance to save themselves, and they blew it. Now, under new ownership they are desperately trying to get a hold in the new car entertainment business, and sued another company for making a keyboard that looked like theirs.

Later Blackberry Models (2014, notice any similarities?)

In conclusion, I will say that I think Blackberry should really just stop trying. Spend the little money in the corporate account on some kind of pension plans for your employees to get new jobs, and go down in history as one of the most innovative companies in early smartphone business, who ended by trying to hold on to some remnant of their past, unsuccessfully, while the rest of the world looked on in sadness. A depressing story, but I don't see it coming out any other better way.